NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) — A bill to allow Tennessee public schools to charge tuition to children illegally in the U.S. or deny them enrollment passed another state Senate committee Tuesday, though again with multiple ‘no’ votes from Republican members.

A new amendment to the bill appears to reinstitute a mandate that all state public school systems document the citizenship, visa or legal immigration status of each child seeking to enroll. A previous amendment from last week would have given school systems an option to not check that status and to continue serving all students regardless of legal status. The current bill does make the decision whether to deny enrollment or demand tuition optional for school districts.

Senate Bill 0836, sponsored by Hixson Republican Bo Watson, passed the Senate Finance, Ways and Means Committee 7-4 and will now head to the Senate Calendar Committee. News Channel 11 emailed Watson’s office Tuesday morning for clarification on the documentation issue but had not received a response by late Tuesday afternoon. We also requested an interview March 26 after Watson’s previous amendment but did not receive a response.

Sen. Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville) was in Tuesday’s meeting and told News Channel 11 in an afternoon Zoom call that he interpreted the amendment to mean school districts would be required to develop systems to document citizenship/legal status.

“Trying to determine as a matter of law what someone’s immigration status is a thorny endeavor that usually requires a lot of expertise in both the way the documents work from other states and what the law says,” Yarbro said. He said if the law passes he expects school systems will need to seek outside legal counsel to enact it.

“It’s going to be a massive expense that’s genuinely an unfunded mandate,” Yarbro said.

Yarbro’s assessment contrasts with Watson’s remarks during the committee meeting, during which he said school districts already collect the information.
In addition to Democrats London Lamar and Yarbro, Republican Senators Ferrell Haile and Page Walley voted against the bill. Watson, John Stevens, Joey Hensley, Jack Johnson, Bill Powers, Paul Rose and Ken Yager, all Republicans, voted in favor.

Advocacy groups have expressed strong opposition to the bill, which would likely wind up in court if it becomes law due to its implicit challenge to the 1982 Plyler v Doe Supreme Court decision. That 5-4 ruling found that all children in the U.S., regardless of legal status, have a right to a free, public K-12 education.

Monday, when the amended bill still made checking student status optional, Johnson City School Board Chairman Jonathan Kinnick told News Channel 11 the system would not set up such a system if it was optional.

“I can’t imagine any system that would do that,” Kinnick said. “I know for sure Johnson City will not.”

Watson cites ‘costs imposed upon the citizens’

Watson produced a chart showing sharply rising costs to provide English Language Learner (ELL) classes. Because school systems don’t track the number of undocumented students they teach, he said he’s using that as “a correlation of what may be happening in the undocumented community.”

“I have long felt that we need to have a conversation about the costs imposed upon the citizens for funding ELL,” Watson said.

Neither Walley nor Haile asked their fellow Republican Watson any questions before casting their ‘no’ votes, but Yarbro and Lamar had numerous questions and comments.

Yarbro said he believed the bill would create significant administrative costs for school districts to set up documentation systems centered around citizenship verification. He added that school systems would likely keep most of their ELL staff in place to continue teaching what he estimated is the vast majority of ELL students with citizenship or legal status.

“If you talk to districts and think about what it means to convert all 1,800 public schools into institutions that review the citizenship status of every student every year, that is going to be massively expensive,” Yarbro said.

Watson disagreed, though he said the Tennessee Department of Education’s promulgation of rules regarding the process would provide the most specific answers to cost. He held up enrollment forms for the Metro Nashville Public Schools that ask for a birth certificate, passport, I-94 or other paperwork related to a person’s place of birth after Lamar also expressed concerns about the difficulty people might have getting the required documentation.

“These things are already being required,” Watson said. “I’m not adding anything to that. So the challenges that you describe would exist today.”

Concerns about ICE, morality of legislation

Lamar asked Watson whether school systems “will be required to call ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) if a student attempting to enroll can’t show citizenship or legal status. Watson said the legislation doesn’t address that.

“That would be considered in the rules and regulations that the Department of Education would promulgate relative to this legislation,” Watson said.

Lamar said she didn’t find that answer sufficient.

“I just want to point … to the dangers of how we’re creating another avenue for law enforcement to come in and take children away based on something they cannot control,” she said.

The fear of ICE entering schools is real enough that Johnson City Schools have at least prepared for that possibility, Kinnick told News Channel 11 Monday.

“We’ve already got protocols in place in case ICE shows up at the school,” Kinnick said.

“The administrators know what to do, to send them here to Central Office. The Central Office knows what to ask credential-wise and authority-wise. So we’re prepared if anything strange does happen.”

Yarbro said during Tuesday’s meeting the legislation has “a moral cost,” and said getting at the number of undocumented people in Tennessee could be done by penalizing companies that hire undocumented workers.

“That would at least be going after the people who are relying upon and in many cases profiting from undocumented labor,” he said.

“But instead we are in this legislation punishing kids. Children. For conduct that, regardless of what you think, here certainly isn’t a 6-year-old and 7-year-old’s fault. Depriving people of the ability to become literate, to learn the language of the country where they are living is … unconscionable.”

Watson said schools that choose not to enroll students won’t lose state funding for those slots. He said the state’s other K-12 students would gain if undocumented ones pay tuition or aren’t enrolled, “to the extent that the per pupil funding for the students who are documented is increased, which increases what people have been screaming for across the state.”

The bill has mostly been in Senate committees so far, and from those votes, it appears Senate Republicans will be at least somewhat split on it. Republicans, though, hold a 27-6 advantage in that chamber, and at least 11 of them would have to defect from a full Senate vote to defeat the bill.

“It’s remarkably uncommon to see this level of opposition to a bill that’s brought by leadership of the Republican party,” Yarbro told News Channel 11. Four out of 15 Republican senators in committees have cast ‘no’ votes on the bill, and three House Republicans (out of 14 voting) voted ‘no’ in an Education Committee meeting last week — including Sixth District Rep. Tim Hicks of Gray.

“I think that you’ve seen a lot of people who are motivated by their faith conviction, motivated by just their sense of what’s right and wrong who are going to stand in opposition to this bill and think that this is a bridge just way too far,” Yarbro said.

So far, in committee, the ratio has not equaled that 16-11 level. A total of 11 Republicans have voted yes in committee, and four have voted no: Haile, Walley, Mark Pody and Kerry Roberts.

In addition to the seven who voted in favor Tuesday, Education Committee members Rusty Crowe of Johnson City, Dawn White, Bill Powers and Adam Lowe have cast yes votes.